I sat around a table of adults who were there to interview me. At twenty-one years old, I had butterflies in my tummy and my hands were clammy with nervousness. I had applied to be a summer camp counselor at Methodist camp that served the poor and elderly in rural North Carolina. The only question that I remember from that day was this:
“Which person in the Bible do you most respect?”
My answer was Paul, but not for the reasons that you might expect. It wasn’t because he had served Jesus sacrificially or because he had written a large part of the New Testament. It was because he made this honest statement about himself in 1 Timothy 1:15, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and I am the worst of them all.”